“Whenever you have infinities in a theory, that’s where the theory fails as a description of nature. And if space was born in the Big Bang, yet is infinite now, we are forced to believe that it’s instantaneously, infinitely big. It seems absurd.” -Janna Levin

Of course, we don't believe space was born in the Big Bang, but this wasn't intuitive for a long time! Indeed, given the cosmic unknowns of inflation, dark matter and dark energy, and the fact that what we consider to be "normal matter" only makes up around 5% of the total amount of energy in the cosmos, isn't it time to revisit the Big Bang?

More like this

"We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry." -Maria Montessori
The Universe has some wonderful sights to show you if you know how to look for them, and that's maybe most apparent when you look at some of the amazing…

“Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.” -Longfellow
The cosmic microwave background is a thing of beauty, as not only does its uniform, cold temperature reveal a hot, dense past that began with the hot Big Bang, but…

“Gamow was fantastic in his ideas. He was right, he was wrong. More often wrong than right. Always interesting; … and when his idea was not wrong it was not only right, it was new.” -Edward Teller
100 years ago, our conception of the Universe was so small it's almost laughable. We still were mired…

"By denying scientific principles, one can maintain any paradox." -Galileo Galilei
Day and night. It seems like the simplest, most natural thing about our world, that the Sun illuminates one half of the Earth at a time.
Image credit: Public Domain Image from Desktop Wallpaper HD.
While the Earth…

They are purporting this idea of Big Bang as fact! And they also say that they cannot see and do not know what most of the universe is made. And yet, they think they can explain all the way back to the very origin of it all. I can remember being taught that since hot things expand and colder things contract, and the earth was getting cooler and therefore getting smaller that the earth was getting smaller and the crust was buckling and that is how mountains occurred. And also there was a medium for the conveyance of waves and water so therefore there was a medium for conveyance of light. They called that conveyance of light was ether. Now they are beginning to say the red shift in stellar light is Doppler shift and therefore assuming an expanding universe.

Also, they say, that you can look at the farthest galaxies and see back in time because the light is taken so long to get here and see the universe as it was 13 or 14 billion years ago. But if the universe was not spread out as it is now, then how come we don't see this compacted universe (and in every direction we look). I mean what they're saying is you look outside our world in every direction and see our universe when it was very small. It just does not make any sense to me!

Ethan, your continue with this weird eccentric syntax in which you say that the Big Bang occurred after cosmic inflation. That is contrary to the statements of the vast majority of cosmologists, who say the Big Bang is the very beginning, and inflation something that is part of the Big Bang (or after the Big Bang). For example, here is a definition of the Big Bang:
"The rapid expansion of matter from a state of extremely high density and temperature that according to current cosmological theories marked the origin of the universe."
As far as I can see from studying this matter for decades, your "Big Bang after inflation" syntax is one that only you are following. What's with that? The "Big Bang" is the very beginning, not something after the very beginning. Do you have some agenda of trying to explain the Big Bang by trying to redefine it as something after Time Zero?
Big Bang = Time Zero, thus spake almost all cosmologists.

Assuming the Big Bang actually took place, and I think it did, it would have been only the most recent such event. In other words it would have been the most recent in an unending series of such events. In addition, what we think of as the Big Bang likely only involved our galaxy the Milky Way. When we talk of explosions.we need to understand that there must be something to explode. Empty vacuums do not explode. Therefore, what would have exploded was a vast area of explosive debris resulting from the collapse of a galaxy that once stood in its place. The major difficulty here is human comprehension of the concept of infinity.

we are not talking about explosions. Period. All the incorrect mental pictures associated with explosion are what causes the misunderstanding in BB. Plus all the science shows that compete to render the bigger and better BOOM when talking about BB, are not helping.

"When we talk of explosions.we need to understand that there must be something to explode. ""

No, we must realise that we're using the word "explode" for something that doesn't have to have been an explosion.

There no more needs to have been something to explode than we need to understand the role of the Heffalump Excrement cleaner's job.

PS your claims require that you know what space and time are in detail. If you do, please write a paper for everyone to read. Otherwise realise that your claims are based off assumptions you've brought up and have not shown to be true.

The big bang theory assumes that the observed apparent redshift is entirely due to Doppler effect. The current paradigm stipulates that space isn't as empty as previously expected. There is a lot of dark matter out there. How does it affect photons? What proportion of redshift is due to re-radiation of absorbed photons at longer wavelengths? The answer will profoundly affect our calculations on the age of the universe and may possibly upset the big bang apple cart.

@Andy #11: I'd strongly recommend doing some research (use scholar.google.com to get actual journal articles, rather than random Internet woo) on these subjects. They've all been investigated in detail, and you would serve yourself better by reviewing the actual science, rather than taking someone's word for it. However, I can summarize the situation for you.

1) The cosmological redshift is _not_ "due to Doppler effect." It is entirely distinct, and is due to the variation of the cosmological metric (i.e., the scale factor a(t)) while light is traversing cosmological distances. Because the changing scale factor corresponds to an apparent motion between distant points in the cosmos, the cosmological redshift may be used to compute that apparent velocity.

2) Dark matter doesn't interact with photons, which is why it has the label "dark". If it did, then we would be able to see the absorption/interaction effects, which we don't. The current best limit on the DM/gamma-gamma cross section is something like 10^-50 cm^2 (for comparison, the cross-section for gamma-gamma scattering is roughly a picobarn, or 10^-36 cm^2).

3) The idea of "grey dust" emulating a cosmological redshift has been around for 50+ years. Such a model fails because it cannot reproduce the clear and distictive structure of absorption and emission lines seen at all redshifts. Essentially, such rescattering would wash out distinct lines and leave a smooth continuous spectrum.

We _do_ see the effects of dust absorption, both in our own galaxy and in other galaxies. You may look up "interstellar column density" to find useful information about it. These effects do not mimic redshifts, but do cause a clear decrease in intensity as a function of distance, and have their own distinctive absorption windows (wavelength bands). In other galaxies, those windows are themselves redshifted in the same way that individual atomic and molecular lines are.

So, the beginning of the universe exists as the most distant and therefore most ancient thing we can possibly observe, that being the scope of the entire observational horizon, and yet this represents at that same time both the largest thing and the smallest thing imaginable... truly amazing!

Presuming that all electromagnetic emissions continue to degrade over time and distance through a potentially infinite amount of various interferences, at what observed time/distance is it expected that only IR survives to be observed regardless of anything which might actually exist beyond that horizon?

Are extremely narrow windows of observation as necessary for high end powers prone to capture increasing levels of radiometric interference originating from sources tangent to such window?

Considering that we actually observe incident waves as opposed to actual "rays" of light, does not relative positional movements of the observed sources versus observing terminus positions over billions of years become rather onerous at some point?

@Lloyd Hargrove #13: I'm not sure "degrade" is the right word. The cosmological redshift causes the spectrum from some object to _shift_, depending on how far away (i.e., how old) it is, but the structure of that spectrum doesn't change substantially. Indeed, that's how we discovered the cosmological redshift in the first place -- Hubble and others identified patterns of spectral lines which were all shifted systematically.

We do observe absorption and scattering of light, from sources within our galaxy. Those effects do _not_ shift spectral lines systematically (and hence do not look anything like redshift). Rather, they reduce intensity and add additional absorption lines to the spectrum, due to the intervening gas and dust. These effects are well understood and quantifiable in observation.

The cosmological density is so low, and the scattering cross-sections so small, that light propagates essentially in straight lines, even from distant galaxies. Where it is deflected, for example due to gravitational lensing, the effect is local and quantifiable. Random scattering (e.g., off of dust) does not preserve pointing.

Donate

ScienceBlogs is where scientists communicate directly with the public. We are part of Science 2.0, a science education nonprofit operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please make a tax-deductible donation if you value independent science communication, collaboration, participation, and open access.

You can also shop using Amazon Smile and though you pay nothing more we get a tiny something.

More by this author

What better way to say farewell than with a slew of costume pictures from this year's (coming) Halloween?
Happy Halloween 2017!
From Ethan Siegel and Starts With A Bang.
Keep looking to the Universe.
And we'll have a lifetime of wonderful things to still explore.
Goodbye, Scienceblogs,…

"Delay is the deadliest form of denial." -C. Northcote Parkinson
Every massless particle and wave travels at the speed of light when it moves through a vacuum. Over a distance of 130 million light years, the gamma rays and gravitational waves emitted by merging neutron stars arrived offset by a…

“On what can we now place our hopes of solving the many riddles which still exist as to the origin and composition of cosmic rays?” –Victor Francis Hess
It’s often said that advanced in physics aren’t met with “eureka!” but rather with “that’s funny,” but the truth is even stranger sometimes.…

“I am looking at the future with concern, but with good hope.” –Albert Schweitzer
Every so often, the argument comes up that science is expendable. That we’re simply investing too much of our resources — too much public money — into an endeavor with no short-term benefits. Meanwhile, there’s…

"Dark matter is interesting. Basically, the Universe is heavier than it should be. There's whole swathes of stuff we can't account for." -Talulah Riley
One of the most puzzling facts about the Universe is that 95% of the energy in it, in the forms of dark matter and dark energy, are completely…

More reads

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -Richard Feynman
Every few months now, the popular press goes wild with claims that there’s a new engine out there, one that produces thrust without any exhaust, violating the fundamental law of conservation of momentum.
Image credit: NASA Spaceflight forums, via Chris Bergin.…

By Dr. Richard Quinn; Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, SETI Institute, and Gail Jacobs
Is the surface of Mars really sterile, or could there be still-undiscovered traces of life littering this hostile landscape? Chemist Richard Quinn focuses on understanding the reactive processes that take place on the surface of the Red Planet, and how these might give a better idea of…

This is the time of year when our yard becomes an extra room in our house. Where a man might sit around butt naked except for a straw hat, reading. I mean he really could. If he wanted to. You'll notice I'm not appending a selfie.
Anybody into Ariel Pink? Seems to be a true original. His 2014 song "Dayzed Inn Daydreams" has the weirdest Motown interlude in the middle.
I never understood, growing…